


threnody

by Marcia Elena (marciaelena)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Post-Colonization (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 09:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14445975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marciaelena/pseuds/Marcia%20Elena
Summary: When you're the last living voice in the world, what choice is there but to speak?  Sequel toamaranthine





	threnody

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 18th Lyric Wheel, the 'Spooky Wheel', November 2004.
> 
> Thank you to Rhi for the great lyrics.

The woman perches on the surf-battered promontory, looking out at the sea. The day is fading into twilight, and the sharp incoming breeze licks and tugs at her ragged clothes, makes her long tangled hair flutter and dance, flame-like against the darkening sky. 

She sings. Her voice, once held back by inhibition, soars high and free above the ocean, swirling with the wind and the waves, twining with the shrill cries of seabirds and the whispering voices of the dead--a whispering that never stops, as constant as the wash of the tides. 

There was a time, long ago, when she hadn't been able to hear them. There was a time when she had tried to flee them, but they were everywhere, and no matter where she'd turn she'd see their faces, their strange eyes boring into her, trying to pull her into distances she cared not explore. 

This rocky shore is her resting place--the place where she stopped running, from the ghosts and from herself. The place where she started listening to the music of the world. The place where the dead come to tell her their history. 

Though she had tried to deny all of that even here. Before the songs there had also been a time of despair, a time of loneliness and grief and madness. A time when she'd tried to spill all of her salt into the sea, to draw the whole of the sea into herself, but the blood and the tears had never stopped flowing, the breath had never left her body, no matter how often and how hard she'd tried. It was her curse. It was her blessing. 

Life, everlasting.

She had stopped denying, then. And finally, she began hearing. 

Here is where she found that the distances she'd once seen in the eyes of the dead, the distances she'd so feared, those distances had lain within herself all along. Here is where she understood: she is a repository, depthless, boundless, as vast as the sea and the sky, as vast as all the seas and all the skies in all the worlds. She is continuance, endless, ageless, and she has time enough to learn all the stories. Time enough to weave them back into the world. 

_Remember us_ , the dead had whispered. 

And so she became Memory. 

_Sing us_ , they had pleaded. _Let us relive our lives through what we tell you._

Thus, she is now Solace.

And as she sings, the sea listens to her, and the wind, and the rocks, and the stars at night. Her dead remember her, the ones who are always here next to her, standing silent through all her words: the tall dark-haired woman and the blue-eyed infant boy in her arms, the little girl with the sad smile. 

She dares not ask who sings for her. 

She knows that god is dead, and all the angels are asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> "Home By The Sea"  
> Genesis
> 
> Home by the sea, home by the sea
> 
> Creeping up the blind side, shinning up the wall  
> Stealing thru the dark of night  
> Climbing thru a window, stepping to the floor  
> Checking to the left and the right  
> Picking up the pieces, putting them away  
> Something doesn't feel quite right
> 
> Help me someone, let me out of here  
> Then out of the dark was suddenly heard  
> Welcome to the home by the sea
> 
> Coming out the woodwork, thru the open door  
> Pushing from above and below  
> Shadows but no substance, in the shape of men  
> Round and down and sideways they go  
> Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair  
> Then as one they sigh and they moan
> 
> Help us someone, let us out of here  
> Living here so long undisturbed  
> Dreaming of the time we were free  
> So many years ago  
> Before the time when we first heard  
> Welcome to the home by the sea
> 
> Sit down sit down  
> Sit down sit down sit down  
> As we relive our lives in what we tell you
> 
> Images of sorrow, pictures of delight  
> Things that go to make up a life  
> Endless days of summer longer nights of gloom  
> Waiting for the morning light  
> Scenes of unimportance, photos in a frame  
> Things that go to make up a life
> 
> Help us someone, let us out of here  
> Cos living here so long undisturbed  
> Dreaming of the time we were free  
> So many years ago  
> Before the time when we first heard  
> Welcome to the home by the sea
> 
> Sit down sit down  
> Sit down sit down sit down sit down  
> As we relive our lives in what we tell you  
> Let us relive our lives in what we tell you
> 
> Sit down sit down sit down  
> Cos you won't get away  
> No with us you will stay  
> For the rest of your days - sit down  
> As we relive our lives in what we tell you  
> Let us relive our lives in what we tell you


End file.
